ADVISORIES ARE AVAILABLE AT http://www.pancanal.com FOR ETAS OR DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH OUR OFFICES, REFER TO NOTICE N-3-2023 Panama Canal Authority Vice Presidency for Operations Advisory T o S hipping No. A-25-2024 August 1, 2024 TO: All Shipping Agents, Owners, and Operators SUBJECT: Modifications to the Transit Reservation (Booking) System The Panama Canal (ACP), in its commitment to provide an efficient and reliable service to its customers, has been working to better understand the needs of customers regarding medium and long-term planning, their desired level of reliability, and the design of a Transit Reservation System that provides maximum value while being flexible, transparent, efficient, and predictable. In response to the valuable feedback and expressed needs of our customers, we are pleased to announce the Long-Term Slot Allocation (LoTSA) initiative for Neopanamax vessels. This initiative enhances our Transit Reservation System certainty by dovetailing with current market conditions, as expressed by our customers. Through the LoTSA method, ACP will offer transit booking slot packages to various market segments, which will include a specific number of weekly or monthly slots per calendar year, for northbound and/or southbound transits. Four slots from the Neopanamax daily offer will be allocated through the LoTSA method, for a total of 28 slots per week, beginning with week one and extending through week 52 per year. Each week spans from Sunday to Saturday. These packages and their characteristics will be announced through the Projected Booking Slot Availability report available in the Panama Canal webpage (www.pancanal.com ) and will be allocated to the highest bidders through a SEALED BID AUCTION. If two or more customers submit a bid for the same amount, the tiebreaker will be based on the order in which the bids were received in the Panama Canal Auction System. The amount of the sealed bid refers to the maximum amount the customer is willing to pay for each slot included in the package, with a base amount of $200,000.00 USD (two hundred thousand US dollars). The sealed bid auctions for the first calendar year of this initiative for booking dates from January 5, 2025, to January 3, 2026, will be held on designated windows beginning September 2, 2024. The terms and conditions for the LoTSA initiative is available in the following link: https://pancanal.com/en/maritimeservices/vessel-eta-and-transit-booking/ The following table summarizes the slot distribution per Booking Period for the Neopanamax Locks for booking dates from January 5, 2025, until further notice: *Slot carried over from Special Period if not awarded ** Includes the “conditioned” slot 3654-A (OP-I) V. 29/03/2023 3654-A (OP-I) V. 29/03/2023 OP, August 1, 2024 Subject: Modifications to the Transit Reservation (Booking) System Slots not allocated through the LoTSA method will be carried over to Booking Period 1a. For the total of all available daily slots offered in all booking periods, including the LoTSA slots, the limits per direction and restriction will be as follows: no more than five (5) Neopanamax vessels may be booked for transit in the northbound direction, and of these, no more than one (1) with daylight restriction. Similarly, no more than four (4) Neopanamax vessels may be booked for transit in the southbound direction, and of these, no more than one (1) with daylight restriction. The rules published in the Notice to Shipping N-7-2024 regardi